The sky was pale mauve-blue, as it can only be in the earliest days of the spring. We stopped for sandwiches and tea kept lukewarm...
Scene: Chino, a town of subdivisions and cattle pens—without traffic, less than an hour away from Los Angeles. At 8am, a pungent manure scent hangs...
‘Do you know where the red hand comes from?’ Six American heads shake from side to side. ‘An ancient king cut off his hand and...
As usual in December, the dirt road to Friendship Park is washed out from a rainstorm, so we walk the mile to the La Posada...
I open my eyes into pitch black, surrounded by sand, camels, and the brightest stars I’ve ever seen.
“I’m not really Jewish.”
Despite a night...
Like a dead cat, I lay in bed. Facing the broken air-conditioning on the other side of the room. The temperature here, in Saudi, plummets...
Tonight, we would not cross the King Fahad causeway. Despite dreadfully wanting to see the film in a movie house, I knew Lars von Trier’s...
In my hands, Alice Munro’s short story collection Dear Life. Saudia’s flight to Dammam from Riyadh is delayed. We sit next to each other. You...
We stare at each other with unblinking intensity, this tiny brown primate and me. I’ve come to the Bohol Tarsier Sanctuary early this morning, a...
Eight. It takes twelve 7th graders to slug a hull to the beach, dark rising. They have not been on the water before and the...
Nandi, the bull-guru of Shaiva Siddhanta’s eight disciples; the trusted vahana and steadfast guardian of that great destroyer, Lord Shiva, greeted me, first, as I...
NONE OF IT was expected. Not the move to Edinburgh from London, the steady civil service job after years of misery. Not the mildest winter,...
I’m on the other side of a century. I was wandering over the crest of a hill and had just passed something for which I...
There is a specific moment of time when the Earth converges with the Heavens. The heat is heavy, and the rain is rolling in. There...
As the door slams shut behind me, the blare of CNN is mercifully replaced by the chirping of crickets. A cool breeze dances across my...
I’m remembering how it felt, being a child confined in the back seat of a car with nothing to do. Curled tight as a dozing...